My Thoughts On Final Fantasy 7

[animorte]

No, actually, I don't tend to put much there myself. The only thing that's sitting there long-term for me right now is a video I'm saving for when I start DMing for my group after our current campaign.

I used to keep it pretty clean, but then kids happened.

I have a separate playlist specifically for different games I’m running. (My wife is fantastic in this area). Final fantasy soundtracks show up often, actually.

[LaZodiac]

Hm, maybe. Not sure when I'd get around to that, given I don't often watch long play-throughs of games. But it also doesn't look like the youtube channel I'd normally turn to for such things has done FF14. If you have a recommendation for one, sure, feel free. Can't hurt to toss it on the Watch Later list.

Two links, for this! (Both lead to the A Realm Reborn era content, both divide them between expansions for pacing reasons).

My friend Robin, who is doing streams of FF14 (currently on hiatus due to continuous, chronic health problems, but with a fair bit of content available, showing a wide range of what the game does, and all of the first expansion and some of the second's worth of plot.)

Dan from Playframe, who is playing through the game bit by bit. I'm not super big on his style and how he presents the game, but I've heard good things.

[Delicious Taffy]

If y'all are tossin' around FF14 videos for story purposes, keep in mind that like 89% of the cutscenes are unvoiced, including very important ones, so you'll have to either pay close attention or hope for a decent narrator. Also it's been going for something like a decade, so it's gonna be a hot minute from start to present.

Don't ask why the protagonists are all albinos, though. Nobody knows for sure.

Edit: Aerith kills Dumbledore. I like materia as a concept, they're neat.

[Rynjin]

Something something Final Fantasy 14 meme here you should play it it's good something something.

It's also worth noting with 14 that it takes a fair few hours to get to "the good part" according to most fans, which is kind of a tough sell for new players.

I think a lot of established 14ers forget that ARR and Heavensward are rough to play.

[LaZodiac]

It's also worth noting with 14 that it takes a fair few hours to get to "the good part" according to most fans, which is kind of a tough sell for new players.

I think a lot of established 14ers forget that ARR and Heavensward are rough to play.

Naw, I recognize that, I just do think ARR is decent (and this is the first I've heard anyone say Heavensward isn't part of The Good Part, so that may just be a sliding scale issue).

[Wookieetank]

For what it's worth, I've found the recent remasters of the first six FF games to have been excellent so far (for anyone interested in seeing the early parts of the series), with the disclaimer that I skipped FF2 and haven't gotten started with a FF6 replay yet. I finally just beat FF5 for the first time and it was great!

FF2 deserves a chance, mechanically its weird yeah, but the story is definitely interesting. There's also plenty of ways to steamroll/cheese the system (punching yourself in the face to inflate your HP total comes to mind), so if you're not enjoying the combat bit might as well so you can see the story.

[LaZodiac]

FF2 deserves a chance, mechanically its weird yeah, but the story is definitely interesting. There's also plenty of ways to steamroll/cheese the system (punching yourself in the face to inflate your HP total comes to mind), so if you're not enjoying the combat bit might as well so you can see the story.

You basically never have to actually do that, as an aside. The game actually balances itself out if you know how the mechanics function- it's not as nuanced as they could be, but still.

Although the pixel remaster borked it a little by not having rows work properly. Oops.

[GloatingSwine]

Punching yourself in the face is the worst way to cheese FF2.

The best way is as soon as you get the canoe and go over the river to the east of the start, equip dual shields and find the bird enemy (that never runs away) and waggle your shields at it over and over again until you get to shield 16, then take off all your armour except Ribbons when you get them and nothing can hit you with physical attacks because your evade is maxed.

You will want a bit of HP but you can set yourself on fire for that.

Later on in the game there are enemies that hit you for a percentage of your health per attack (and they can do up to like 10 attacks or something daft), so just stacking HP doesn't work against them, but if they can't hit you it doesn't matter.

[tonberrian]

I did find that in FF2 hitting yourself with the drain MP spell WAS the best way to train MP, though.

[Rynjin]

Naw, I recognize that, I just do think ARR is decent (and this is the first I've heard anyone say Heavensward isn't part of The Good Part, so that may just be a sliding scale issue).

Maybe, I really wasn't feeling HW when I played, but that may be in part because I didn't find the game fun to PLAY so it impacted my investment in the story.

[Quizatzhaderac]

I'm curious about how closely the remake will keep to the original plot, being as that both the protagonists and antagonists are trying to fight fate. I'm thinking all of the same people and places will be involved, but it wouldn't make sense for Sephiroth to follow exactly the same path with what he knows. Also, I imagine that many players are eager to avoid the original ending to disc 1 (I like it, narrative wise, but it's natural when playing a video game to want to influence the outcome, and in a revised narrative it would feel like playing a lemming marching off a cliff).

There's also some things that were optional, like Yuffie, Wutai, Vincent, and Gonga that I think are going to be non-optional. Especially if they're expanded; I don't imagine if they make Wutai take 10 hours that they'll leave it 100% skippable.

I'm very curious about how/if they the file continuation. Keeping everything would be way too much, but maybe starting out with a fuller set of Materia (most of which you'll be able to eventually buy anyway) would be nice.

[Wookieetank]

I was just offering the self punching HP as one example, not The Example

I personally try to follow the plot as closely as I can to keep things challenging (longtime SMT fan). Granted there's a fair bit of wandering lost with that, cause I'm also too stubborn to use a guide (or go long stretches between sessions at times and forget where I am or what I'm doing), so I end up overpowered from that usually.

More on topic: FF7 remake was pretty brilliant I felt, and this is coming from a lifelong FF7 obsession (couldn't tell you how many times I've played through it at this point). Was very iffy about the reports of it only covering Midgard ahead of release, but actually playing it was a wildly good time. Everything is fleshed out quite well, adding much more personality to the characters and locations. Much as a couple bits felt like filler to a longtime fan (thanks to already knowing the nature of Shinra and it's projects), they were quite informative for my friends who were watching me play it with no FF7 knowledge going in. The length of time between games is a bit of a bummer, but with how the ending goes, it leaves a lot of room for speculating at what's next while you wait, which is its own kind of fun.

[ZhonLord]

FF7 remake was pretty brilliant I felt, and this is coming from a lifelong FF7 obsession (couldn't tell you how many times I've played through it at this point). Was very iffy about the reports of it only covering Midgard ahead of release, but actually playing it was a wildly good time. Everything is fleshed out quite well, adding much more personality to the characters and locations. Much as a couple bits felt like filler to a longtime fan (thanks to already knowing the nature of Shinra and it's projects), they were quite informative for my friends who were watching me play it with no FF7 knowledge going in. The length of time between games is a bit of a bummer, but with how the ending goes, it leaves a lot of room for speculating at what's next while you wait, which is its own kind of fun.

I agree with most of this, however I have serious, SERIOUS, issue with the biggest change they made. The Whispers.

Mechanically they are frustrating because you have to find the one barely-visually-different controlling one and beat him specifically to get them out of your way, while they're throwing around AoE's and crowd control. Story-wise they are a crutch that lets the writers explain away facets of the story that didn't make reasonable sense - like Cloud not being able to finish off Reno when they fought in the church. Everything the Whispers did to mess with the plot could have been explained differently and still made sense overall.

And lore wise, they create a massive freaking plot hole where none existed previously. I mean as gargantuan as the big final Whisper itself. It breaks the fourth wall and acts as a statement against fan expectations - XYZ happens because those who've seen the original story expect it to occur. In a meta sense it's literally the writers' representation of their own fans stifling what they want the remake's story to be, but even that's inconsistent because they changed other stuff just fine without relying on their self made crutch.

In world they don't make sense either. They're the representatives and arbiters of the planet's will?! Why would the planet want the sector 7 plate to fall?! Why would the planet do anything that aids a living parasite on its surface, be it Shira or sephiroth? The Whispers can fight and injure, why don't they attack the Reunion clones to protect itself? Can the planet see the future? If so why does it take actions that put it on the path that has the highest odds of its destruction?!

Everything about the Whispers, beginning to end, adds unnecessary convolutions, questions that the original didn't have to answer, and detract from the story instead of adding to it. And I REALLY hope the results of the boss fights at the end of the game means that we won't see so much as a single spectral hood in Part 2.

[Wookieetank]

I agree with most of this, however I have serious, SERIOUS, issue with the biggest change they made. The Whispers.

Yeah the whispers were annoying, and rather nonsensical. And very much in agreement with you on them and in hoping they're gone from the rest of the games. I did appreciate them being used to tie in FFVII:AC though.

Also hoping for more Roche, he's just so entertainingly over the top and ridiculous. Would've much rather had more of him over the whispers, hell could've used him instead of the whispers a couple of times. Was rather sad when he just unceremoniously dropped out of the story.

[Zevox]

I used to keep it pretty clean, but then kids happened.

I have a separate playlist specifically for different games I’m running. (My wife is fantastic in this area). Final fantasy soundtracks show up often, actually.

Yeah, I hear those do a number on your free time.

While the video I'm referring to is a song, it's not actually for background music. It's someone singing a song that's included near the start of the adventure - Descent into Avernus, specifically, if you're familiar. Because I'm sure it'll make a better experience to play that than to try and sing it myself.

Two links, for this! (Both lead to the A Realm Reborn era content, both divide them between expansions for pacing reasons).

My friend Robin, who is doing streams of FF14 (currently on hiatus due to continuous, chronic health problems, but with a fair bit of content available, showing a wide range of what the game does, and all of the first expansion and some of the second's worth of plot.)

Dan from Playframe, who is playing through the game bit by bit. I'm not super big on his style and how he presents the game, but I've heard good things.

Saved them both, thank you.

I'm curious about how closely the remake will keep to the original plot, being as that both the protagonists and antagonists are trying to fight fate. I'm thinking all of the same people and places will be involved, but it wouldn't make sense for Sephiroth to follow exactly the same path with what he knows. Also, I imagine that many players are eager to avoid the original ending to disc 1 (I like it, narrative wise, but it's natural when playing a video game to want to influence the outcome, and in a revised narrative it would feel like playing a lemming marching off a cliff).

There's also some things that were optional, like Yuffie, Wutai, Vincent, and Gonga that I think are going to be non-optional. Especially if they're expanded; I don't imagine if they make Wutai take 10 hours that they'll leave it 100% skippable.

I'm very curious about how/if they the file continuation. Keeping everything would be way too much, but maybe starting out with a fuller set of Materia (most of which you'll be able to eventually buy anyway) would be nice.

I'm thinking it'll keep pretty close, personally. A speculation I recall from a youtuber I follow that makes sense to me is that with the whole Whispers thing indicating to people that events can now be changed, what they'll do in Rebirth is make you think that Aerith's death (which I assume was the ending of disc 1? I played it as a digital copy on PS4) can be averted, only to have it happen anyway. Really twist the knife, make it sure it still has similar impact despite people knowing what happens in the original by giving you that hope. I'd expect more divergences in smaller details (such as Biggs being shown alive at the end of Remake) than in the big story moments. Although there is the looming question of what's up with the Zack teases at the end of Remake and Intergrade, so perhaps I'll be wrong.

And yeah, they certainly seem to want to better integrate Yuffie, given the Intergrade DLC (though to be fair, as a DLC mission that's separate from the rest of the story so far, it is technically optional as it stands...), so hopefully that extends to Vincent as well. Those two were always rather awkward compared to the other party members in the original, and being optional is almost certainly why. Well, and also the fact that there wasn't much explanation for why the group would let Yuffie join them after she tried to steal from them in the first place...

I'd guess that some things might carry over with a save file from Remake, but probably not every detail, yeah. I doubt they'll be starting you with materia already fully leveled up, for example.

I agree with most of this, however I have serious, SERIOUS, issue with the biggest change they made. The Whispers.

Eh, the Whispers were a representation of Fate that gets destroyed in order to drive home that there can and will be divergences from the original, and they allowed for an epic final boss fight when none otherwise would've been present. That's all that ultimately matters about them.

Also hoping for more Roche, he's just so entertainingly over the top and ridiculous. Would've much rather had more of him over the whispers, hell could've used him instead of the whispers a couple of times. Was rather sad when he just unceremoniously dropped out of the story.

Oh, I have no doubt we'll be seeing more of him. He seems like someone who was introduced entirely to be a recurring side-quest character in future games to me.

[Quizatzhaderac]

Something that especially bugged me was encountering the whispers immediately after a section with vanilla ghosts. Two entirely different, but stylistically similar, supernatural things in sequence?

Why didn't the characters think the whispers were ghosts, if ghosts were a totally known thing and whispers weren't?

And why are they scared of ghosts, but not these other apparitions?

[Wookieetank]

And why are they scared of ghosts, but not these other apparitions?

My best guess is ghosts are seen as Acutal Dead People(TM), and the whispers as WTF are you.

[PhantomFox]

I think Maximilian_dood had a video on this explaining his view that made a lot of sense. I'll try to find it this evening

[lord_khaine]

Eh, the Whispers were a representation of Fate that gets destroyed in order to drive home that there can and will be divergences from the original

This does kinda sound like they dont have the guts to go with the plot twist of the original?

Are there anyone here who played the original when it came out, that are still ready to say positive stuff about the remake?
Or at least defend it as not a cash grab?

[LaZodiac]

This does kinda sound like they dont have the guts to go with the plot twist of the original?

Are there anyone here who played the original when it came out, that are still ready to say positive stuff about the remake?
Or at least defend it as not a cash grab?

It is an incredible game from beginning to end. Calling it a cash grab is honestly just kinda silly.

What exactly do you mean by twist of the original, by the way?

[DaedalusMkV]

This does kinda sound like they dont have the guts to go with the plot twist of the original?

Are there anyone here who played the original when it came out, that are still ready to say positive stuff about the remake?
Or at least defend it as not a cash grab?

Yes. It was an excellent game, and aside from being an ARPG rather than ATB turn-based is an improvement over the original in every conceivable way (and I'm only making an exception there to account for people who hate ARPGs). I played it with a friend, both of us having played every Final Fantasy game back in the day, and we were both huge fans of it. Calling it a cash-grab is total nonsense. It massively expands the story, is dramatically better at developing the characters and just in general does everything extremely well. The only argument you could possibly make for it being a 'cash-grab' is that it is a remake of an older game, but it's not like one of those 'remasters' which amounts to a graphical patch and a few bug fixes. They completely rebuilt the entire thing from the ground up, and no effort was spared on any of it. This is how remakes should be done. Would it have been nice to get the whole story in one game? Sure. But the game tells a full story, it's already like 50 hours long, I'm not going to complain about what we got.

As for the other point, assuming you mean Aerith's death... Time will tell. And no, I'm not going to put in spoiler tags for a game that came out in 1997, for a plot twist that was all over the internet by 2000 and was literally one of the first internet memes. Everybody already knows it. Might as well put Rosebud being a sled in spoiler tags. And IMO, half the point of what they did with the Whispers in the remake was specifically for the purpose of guaranteeing that there was still some dramatic tension left for the rest of the story.

Spoiler: Spolers for FF7 Remake

Show

Sephiroth and Jenova broke fate on purpose. The original timeline guaranteed they lost, so they changed the timeline. Aerith might die... Or it might be someone else. At the time she's supposed to or any other time. Once the party leaves Midgar in the Remake anything could happen. I expect we'll get a lot of the same story beats as the original game, but I fully expect major divergences to the plot of the game. And that's not a bad thing. FF7 was at its strongest up until the whole bit in the Lifestream and gets kind of weak from there. I'm quite excited to see what they do with it from here.

[Gnoman]

Do they at least get the characters right? One of the reasons I've avoided the remake (besides being absolutely furious at it not being turn based) is that most of the later stuff with the characters really missed the boat - swapping the personalities of Tifa and Aerith (in the original, Tifa's the girly girl in personality), turning Cloud into a Squall clone (there's a portion in the original game where he's moody and depressed, but that's not how he starts or ends) being the big ones.

[LaZodiac]

Do they at least get the characters right? One of the reasons I've avoided the remake (besides being absolutely furious at it not being turn based) is that most of the later stuff with the characters really missed the boat - swapping the personalities of Tifa and Aerith (in the original, Tifa's the girly girl in personality), turning Cloud into a Squall clone (there's a portion in the original game where he's moody and depressed, but that's not how he starts or ends) being the big ones.

During the raid on the Don's house, Aerith takes a folding chair to someone.

Tifa is probably the most elegantly she's ever been portrayed.

When confronting Cloud about the girl outfit he says, in the nerdiest but also raddest way "yeah I know I nailed it lets move on."

They get the characters Perfect.

[Dame_Mechanus]

Naw, I recognize that, I just do think ARR is decent (and this is the first I've heard anyone say Heavensward isn't part of The Good Part, so that may just be a sliding scale issue).

ARR is a bit slow because it has to reintroduce all of the worldbuilding from the (no longer available) version 1.0, introduce its actual plot, resolve its actual plot, and establish a lot of the architecture for the future... while also dealing with the fact that the writers did not yet fully know how long to make quest chains, how best to deploy important plot points, and so forth. That's not the same as being bad, and while my emotional investment wasn't at its height through ARR, it obviously kept me interested enough to keep playing and paying attention even when this was all new content.

I think it's all a bit weaker now if you're going through it waiting to get to the fireworks factory that really starts going off later, but all of it is necessary narrative foundation for later. Yes, even the part with Alphinaud being the most arrogant intelligent idiot on the face of the planet. It's the weakest part of the story in the same way that you don't expect the climax of a novel with 37 chapters to happen within the first four.

They get the characters Perfect.

Better yet, they weave the characters together and give them development and relationships that weren't really well-established in the original a lot more depth. Tifa and Aerith have a natural fun chemistry between them that's already launched a thousand ships. Cloud's characterization is enriched significantly through his interactions with Tifa and Barret; it's much more firmly established that he's taciturn and a mercenary, but he's not actually a heartless jerk, just uninterested in someone whose introduction is basically continually trying to get out of paying him on the basis of a righteous cause. Tifa and Cloud joke with the familiarity of old friends while also having those awkward moments of realizing they've both grown into very different people over the years. The list goes on.

Heck, as mentioned elsewhere, they turn the fate of previously one-note characters where you just thought "well, that's sad" into actual tragic situations where you feel for and care about these people, fleshing out their goals, desires, and wants enough that I desperately wanted the plot to change before the ending rolled around.

I've not played Intergrade at this point, so I can't say if they got Yuffie right too. But my own apprehension about people increasingly forgetting the actual plot of FFVII was handily dismissed; this is the story as it actually happened, not the rehashes of half-remembered plots that didn't really exist. (Except maybe for the relationship between Sephiroth and Cloud, but that has more to do with actual timeline weirdness rather than trying to act like the original story had Sephiroth remembering who Cloud even was.)

[lord_khaine]

The concern about a cash grab is indeed because its a remake of an older game.
And because i have seen several other cases of what looks like it.
Prime example being Warcraft III. At the moment my confidence in AAA companies can lie on a very, very small place.

[Rynjin]

ARR is a bit slow because it has to reintroduce all of the worldbuilding from the (no longer available) version 1.0, introduce its actual plot, resolve its actual plot, and establish a lot of the architecture for the future... while also dealing with the fact that the writers did not yet fully know how long to make quest chains, how best to deploy important plot points, and so forth. That's not the same as being bad, and while my emotional investment wasn't at its height through ARR, it obviously kept me interested enough to keep playing and paying attention even when this was all new content.

I think it's all a bit weaker now if you're going through it waiting to get to the fireworks factory that really starts going off later, but all of it is necessary narrative foundation for later. Yes, even the part with Alphinaud being the most arrogant intelligent idiot on the face of the planet. It's the weakest part of the story in the same way that you don't expect the climax of a novel with 37 chapters to happen within the first four.

The problem is ARR is not a novel, it's a game. Roughly equivalent in length to most AAA games with a plot. I could read 4-5 novels in the time it took me to get through ARR (maybe more).

Turning it on its head, would you play a game series where the first 2 games in the franchise just aren't fun and have a slow, boring, extremely rote story? I wouldn't, even if somebody told me game 3 was amazing.

[LaZodiac]

ARR is a bit slow because it has to reintroduce all of the worldbuilding from the (no longer available) version 1.0, introduce its actual plot, resolve its actual plot, and establish a lot of the architecture for the future... while also dealing with the fact that the writers did not yet fully know how long to make quest chains, how best to deploy important plot points, and so forth. That's not the same as being bad, and while my emotional investment wasn't at its height through ARR, it obviously kept me interested enough to keep playing and paying attention even when this was all new content.

I think it's all a bit weaker now if you're going through it waiting to get to the fireworks factory that really starts going off later, but all of it is necessary narrative foundation for later. Yes, even the part with Alphinaud being the most arrogant intelligent idiot on the face of the planet. It's the weakest part of the story in the same way that you don't expect the climax of a novel with 37 chapters to happen within the first four.

Better yet, they weave the characters together and give them development and relationships that weren't really well-established in the original a lot more depth. Tifa and Aerith have a natural fun chemistry between them that's already launched a thousand ships. Cloud's characterization is enriched significantly through his interactions with Tifa and Barret; it's much more firmly established that he's taciturn and a mercenary, but he's not actually a heartless jerk, just uninterested in someone whose introduction is basically continually trying to get out of paying him on the basis of a righteous cause. Tifa and Cloud joke with the familiarity of old friends while also having those awkward moments of realizing they've both grown into very different people over the years. The list goes on.

Heck, as mentioned elsewhere, they turn the fate of previously one-note characters where you just thought "well, that's sad" into actual tragic situations where you feel for and care about these people, fleshing out their goals, desires, and wants enough that I desperately wanted the plot to change before the ending rolled around.

I've not played Intergrade at this point, so I can't say if they got Yuffie right too. But my own apprehension about people increasingly forgetting the actual plot of FFVII was handily dismissed; this is the story as it actually happened, not the rehashes of half-remembered plots that didn't really exist. (Except maybe for the relationship between Sephiroth and Cloud, but that has more to do with actual timeline weirdness rather than trying to act like the original story had Sephiroth remembering who Cloud even was.)

The funniest thing is that I genuinely, truly, loved every second of ARR. I loved absorbing all the world building, I loved seeing the set up for things starting to build and knowing (if not the details) that they were going to lead somewhere. The ambient feeling that "this is a world that has recently suffered an apocalypse and it shows in every aspect of it" that I just, ****ing love devouring. The personal fear that my favorite Scions, Yda and Papalymo, sure do seem to just... not, get fan art. Oh boy that's horrifying and an experience I loved as much as I did fear it. It's the Good ****!

If you do get into FFXIV, I highly recommend you just enjoy it. Sit back, relax, take it at a gentle pace. Don't rush it. You'll only ruin what makes it so good.

As for FF7REMAKE; agreed on all counts, yeah.

The concern about a cash grab is indeed because its a remake of an older game.
And because i have seen several other cases of what looks like it.
Prime example being Warcraft III. At the moment my confidence in AAA companies can lie on a very, very small place.

Well it's not that so you can rest your laurels and enjoy.

The problem is ARR is not a novel, it's a game. Roughly equivalent in length to most AAA games with a plot. I could read 4-5 novels in the time it took me to get through ARR (maybe more).

Turning it on its head, would you play a game series where the first 2 games in the franchise just aren't fun and have a slow, boring, extremely rote story? I wouldn't, even if somebody told me game 3 was amazing.

I mean, as said above to each their own. I loved ARR!

[Dame_Mechanus]

Turning it on its head, would you play a game series where the first 2 games in the franchise just aren't fun and have a slow, boring, extremely rote story? I wouldn't, even if somebody told me game 3 was amazing.

This analogy falls apart because it is predicated on the assumption that the game isn't fun; if you aren't having fun you aren't going to suddenly start having fun because Emet-Selch is snarking at you about how he doesn't consider you a person. FFXIV is an excellent game, and it also is a game that tells you what it is going to be pretty accurately within the first 15 levels or so. Heck, I don't agree with the premise of "the story is bad in ARR" which is why I chose my words very specifically to avoid that.

The funniest thing is that I genuinely, truly, loved every second of ARR. I loved absorbing all the world building, I loved seeing the set up for things starting to build and knowing (if not the details) that they were going to lead somewhere. The ambient feeling that "this is a world that has recently suffered an apocalypse and it shows in every aspect of it" that I just, ****ing love devouring.

Oh, don't get me wrong; even if I was less invested in what ultimately happens to most of the characters in ARR, I still loved ARR well enough to keep playing nonstop. I might not have had strong opinions on Urianger or Y'shtola, but I sure loved the world that was being set up, was curious about what the Ascians were trying to accomplish, loved every little nugget we got about regions like Doma and Ishgard, and spent lots of time speculating on the roleplaying forums about what little lore details could potentially mean. (All of our speculation was wrong, but that was part of the fun.)

Really, what's changed is just that now I'm as invested in the characters as I am in the world and have very strong opinions about the characters. I've only had Zero for one patch, but if anything happens to her I will riot.

[ZhonLord]

Are there anyone here who played the original when it came out, that are still ready to say positive stuff about the remake?
Or at least defend it as not a cash grab?

Absolutely. The Whispers are my one sole gripe about the game. The combat is excellent, the hybrid of realtime and turn-based combats flows smoothly, you're encouraged to swap between characters and use all three in bigger fights, and all of the OTHER story additions are great and fit the world.

Do they at least get the characters right? One of the reasons I've avoided the remake (besides being absolutely furious at it not being turn based) is that most of the later stuff with the characters really missed the boat - swapping the personalities of Tifa and Aerith (in the original, Tifa's the girly girl in personality), turning Cloud into a Squall clone (there's a portion in the original game where he's moody and depressed, but that's not how he starts or ends) being the big ones.

Tifa is a good hearted warrior who can kick your butt one second and serve you drinks the next, provided you've learned your lesson. She's friendly and helpful without being innocent or naive, and if you're willing to hurt innocents to get your way then you're going to get a metal-knuckled fist down your throat.

Cloud seems emotionless at first, but enough of his real personality seeps through across the early parts that his opening up to banter with Aerith comes naturally. His willingness to fight and help his allies, and his complete social awkwardness with Jesse and the other Avalanche members, fits the established character beautifully and give us more tastes of the man beneath the Hojo Project.

Barrett is a tough leader who's driven to get things done, but is also fiercely protective of his team and won't leave anyone behind. He's also more preachy about the planet's well-being and the issues mako is causing, but it's not overdone. The devs just brought that up to the same level of passion and intensity as everything else Barrett does. And when he's with his daughter Marlene it's downright adorable - as is she, they largely used her Advent Children personality and turned back time a few years.

And Aerith. Holy crap Aerith. Her kindness, her perceptiveness, her courage and magical prowess, they did everything about her correctly and more. You aren't just told she's not quite human, you see it. You feel it. She makes everyone around her better just by interacting with them without ever seeming"ordinary" herself, the devs captured everything that makes her an enchanting figure and made it BETTER.

Eh, the Whispers were a representation of Fate that gets destroyed in order to drive home that there can and will be divergences from the original, and they allowed for an epic final boss fight when none otherwise would've been present. That's all that ultimately matters about them.

That's my point. They're a contrived snub at the fourth wall and the fans of the original. And none of this addresses the plot holes their very existence creates, per my above post. If you're going to inject something like this into a story, it has to fit. It has to make sense. It has to be executed well. The Whispers are none of these.

[Quizatzhaderac]

This does kinda sound like they dont have the guts to go with the plot twist of the original?

If they repeat that plot point, it's not a twist.

As I understand from interviews and such, they didn't include a death because Aerith had a fatal flaw like in a greek tragedy, they included a death because sometimes that just happens in the world without making moral sense.

But if Aerith dies in at the same time and same place it's not going to feel random anymore.

Are there anyone here who played the original when it came out, that are still ready to say positive stuff about the remake?
Or at least defend it as not a cash grab?

This is the least lazy-ily made game I've ever played, both in terms of production values, and the fact that they seem to have seriously thought about each change they made.